


"No Salvation In Becoming Adapted"

by EA Karras (Anne)



Category: Terminator (Movies), Terminator - All Media Types, Terminator Salvation (2009), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anne/pseuds/EA%20Karras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'They never really got married, not in the legal sense of the word. Not exactly. He was with her, she was with him.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	"No Salvation In Becoming Adapted"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Medie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/gifts).



> This is a few years old. I don't remember when I wrote it, why I wrote it. Just that it was apparently "for" Medie.

They never really got married, not in the legal sense of the word. Not exactly. He was with her, she was with him.

At first it was because it was convenient, because Kate was there and there wasn't anyone else. No one else and nothing else to do but talk and wait. Try to distract each other from the fact that the world they knew was ending.

The world John Connor knew had ended when he was ten years old. Though, he wasn't really sure that was even true. That he'd ever really known anything but this. But the war. But machines and metal and destruction.

They were together because it was convenient, because they'd been through something together. A shared experience, like his mother and the soldier that had been sent back to save her. His father.

The 850 had said Kate was like his mother, but he thought that was wrong. Wrong, and maybe a little disturbing on some level. If she was like anyone, he thought she was more like his father. Strong, like his mother had said. Strong and unknowable. Mythic, almost, because of what the metal had said she was. Who the metal had said she was.

He was John Connor because he was born that way. He had no choice in the matter, and that was that. Thanks to his mother, thanks to metal, thanks to his entire goddamned life.

No matter what name he used. John Baum. Henry Gage. It didn't matter. He was John Connor.

And she was Kate Connor now. Without ceremony, without choice. Because of the metal, because of history. Because it's who she was meant to be. Because she was there when the world ended, because she was a healthy female of breeding age, because she was Kate Brewster. Because her father helped design Skynet.

Whether he wanted her or not. Whether she wanted him or not.

There were things that changed because they knew that they were coming. Of course there were. There always were. Small things, minor things. Things they were able to find out about once he'd managed to scrape the 850's chip out of rubble, once the fallout had dropped enough for them to be able to venture out even a little bit.

Soldiers who were meant to die that they were able to save. Tech they were able to salvage, metal they were able to scrub and use for their own, keep from Skynet and whatever other AIs were still lingering beyond Skynet's reach.

They were together in that, at least. The same in that, at least.

Slowly, they collected soldiers and civilians. Building their own little resistance pocket here in the base the 850 had locked them inside. Pilots and scientists. Doctors and just people. Everyday people who had somehow survived this hell and were trying to fight back.

It would be different, this time. It was different this time, in it's own little way.

They spent time together, of course. They were Kate and John Connor, and they were lonely. If anyone knew what it meant to be like him and be lonely, it was her. They spent time together, and they slept together. Of course they did.

He loved her, he supposed, in his own way. Loved her and didn't. Loved her and did. Because of who she was? Maybe. Because of what she could do, for him, for the resistance? Maybe. 

It didn't matter. He was lonely. She was there. she was Kate.

Eventually, he found his father. Kyle Reese. A fourteen, fifteen year old boy out in the remains of Griffith Park. Of course he sent out a recon team to retrieve the kid. He had to, didn't he? He couldn't not be born. He couldn't do something like that, make that sort of change to history.

Even if he was sometimes tempted.

And in any case, he was interested. Curious. Wanted to see what the boy who would grow to be his father was like. So of course he went with the recon team. Why wouldn't he?

He was surprised when he found them. Kyle Reese. An older boy, about eighteen. A younger girl, maybe ten or eleven. Derek Reese. Allison Young. A soldier, Martin Bedell.

New elements. Elements he hadn't been aware of. Had they been there in the original timeline? Probably. Possibly.

He didn't know.

But coming had been a mistake. Metal converged and they had to fight. By the time it was over, Kyle Reese, Martin Bedell and John Connor were all in Century. It took years to escape. Years of pain and blood and fear.

Years of confusion, because all of these things were so new. New elements that he hadn't been expecting, that he didn't know what to do with.

Years where he didn't miss Kate, but he missed not being lonely. He guessed that was love, in a manner of speaking. He guessed that was as close as it got for John Connor. As close as it mattered.

In the end, it had been Kyle who had gotten them out. Carried John Connor through the slaughterhouse that was Century and gotten him home to his cell. To Kate, who had taken up with a man named Wisher.

To Derek and the girl.

Allison Young. Sixteen, maybe seventeen at that point. Smart and bright. Happy. Almost insanely happy, considering what was going on around her.

She'd laughed and hugged his father, hugged Kyle, when they'd returned. He'd asked Kyle if there was something between him and Allison and had gotten a look in response that made him feel like he was being chastized by a parent.

Which, he guessed, he was. Sort of.

She'd been learning how to scrub metal, and John could see that she was good at it. She'd wanted to build robots, she'd told him one day when they were alone and working together on a Trip-8. 

She told him a lot of things over the next year. About her mother, who had taught music. Her father, who had been an architect. Her sister, who had died in the first wave. That had left her quiet for a day, and he hadn't blamed her.

They talked about a lot of things. She understood a lot of things. What it was like to be alone. What it was like to be special, to be different. Smarter and stranger. Lonely.

She understood, in her own way, what it was like to be John Connor.

He told her everything that he couldn't tell anyone else, not even Kate. He told her about Kyle, who Kyle was. Had been relieved when she believed him, laughed when she explained that she believed him because they looked almost exactly the same.

He hadn't seen it.

He told her about his mother, about growing up like that. About Pescadero. The machines. He told her everything. Trusted her with everything. She trusted him. Cared about him, and he didn't understand it. Didn't know what to do with it.

She told him that it had been her birthday when the attack had happened, and he couldn't think of a worse thing.

And when she kissed him on her eighteenth birthday, he couldn't think of anything better.


End file.
